Monthly Archives: February 2018

Mercy was a schoolyard word

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Mercy was a schoolyard word,

the key unlocking the grip of the bully,

something I saw often enough

but normally (neatly, nimbly)

dodged myself. God did thus

himself a disservice, putting

his good word first in the

mouth of the enemy who demanded it –

of his victim no less.

And this was part of a larger pattern,

I saw, God betting on the wrong horse,

dumping his treasures in the mud,

thinking all-screwed-up might make

the good, the true and the beautiful

self-evident.

Oh I’ll admit:

I never see the truth better

than when I’m wrong

or love purity more

than when I’ve sinned.

So maybe this is just the way.

But why?

Why must dark

dress up our day?

Psalm 151: Or, of broken women and a host of drug-addicted men

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I don’t watch zombie shows but know something about what

emerges from thy dank wood in the boonies, Lord –

have as need be hid behind equal trees,

backing and circling ever outward, dodging

hands and cool blank eyes, upward yes

into the air, “free” of it all, now, over there.

 

But you, wide and ghostly, neither leave nor solve

but hang, steady as the mist, as drops on ferns,

spores of the underside, your heart

rotting out the log. Till when? – we change?

Your breath is gone, but hold it still.

For we’ll not, ever, no matter what we’ve got,

(hell if we will)

change.